


All Good Things

by houfukuseisaku



Category: Pandora Voxx
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-27
Updated: 2019-01-27
Packaged: 2019-10-17 16:25:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17563958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/houfukuseisaku/pseuds/houfukuseisaku
Summary: (...must come to an end.)





	All Good Things

This was it, then. This was what his whole life had led up to. Not that he had much of a life. Or a life left.

Yuuto smiled bitterly, the whirling thoughts in his muddled mind doing nothing to clear out the buzzing din, the incessant static that assaulted his senses and rotted his brain.

The chatter of the crowd surrounding him could barely pierce through that deafening haze of white noise, just a patina of mindless voices struggling to make themselves heard above the roiling, maddening ringing in his ears.

He visited a doctor about it once, (Right? Or was it a professor?), and they claimed that it was a condition. Something… what was it? (Tinnitus? A shrinking hippocampus?) But they gave him medicine, and said that he would feel better. (He didn’t.) They smiled, so he smiled back. What else could he do, after all?

(The buzzing only got louder and louder after that.)

His pupils, sporadically twitching this way and that, as if unsure what to focus on, eventually turned towards the dull, grey train tracks. Slowly, he took a step, and then another, until he broke out in a sprint, lips stretched into a too-wide grin and brain filled with disconnected thoughts. Memories, maybe.

How many trillion years has he wasted, trying to remember this fragmented life?

His alarm clock. The brother he always looked up to. (Pink hair. A floating cube that glowed with all the colours of the rainbow. The clerk at the ticket booth.) A plastic bottle filled with disgusting green liquid. His friends. Blood. (The librarian talking about gods and wishes.) Non-alcoholic wine. Carrots. A doctor involved in a crime. Hero show. Fire extinguisher. Embarrassment. (A diamond and a heart.) Shuu. Natsuki. (A button that could reset a life.) The ringing, buzzing, incessant _mindless noise voices static nothingness **damn it damn it all**_ —!

Closer and closer the train tracks got. Faster and faster his legs carried him. To freedom? To certain death? Yuuto didn’t know anymore. He laughed and leapt into the air, finally free. From the static. From his memories. From that wish. From this pitiful life.

That brilliant sensation of careless free-falling lasted only a moment, before gravity and reality caught up to him.

Still, even as the last of his vision faded into grey, and the sounds of the oncoming train beat hard against the train tracks and his eardrums, his hands reached out as if to grab something, fingers splayed wide. His mind may have forgotten, but his body remembered. (It still had to do something. It still had something to say.) It didn’t want to die. Not yet. Not now.

One moment, Yuuto was there, and the next, he was gone.

The clerk at the train station’s ticket booth gave a sad smile, her dark eyes betraying an emotion she thought she had long forgotten.

“…It’s not game over yet, you know?”

That brilliant cube, glowing pure white and yet bursting through the seams with colours, only grew brighter at its chosen presenter’s six trillionth death.

* * *

“A- ah! Sorry, sorry!”

Sheepishly, Yuuto backed out of the booth where Shuu and Natsuki had gone in to study together, only that they weren’t studying and were instead what could only be described as furiously making out with each other as if the world would end tomorrow. Not really, but hyperbole is fun.

“Sorry! For intruding! Uh, I’m gonna get another book! Okay!”

“Yuuto, wait!”

Breaking away from the kiss, Shuu reached a hand out towards the red-faced boy, but he had already stumbled away out of reach, incoherent mumbles and muttered apologies falling from his lips. The taller boy sighed, leaning himself back against the padded bench, while the girl by his side looked up at him with curious (and slightly indignant) eyes.

“Shuu…”

“… Sorry, Natsuki. It’s just that, Yuuto… he’s been acting strange recently, hasn’t he?”

“Look, I know he’s your best friend and all, but don’t you think you should pay a little more attention to your girlfriend first?”

Natsuki chastised him, albeit in a playful tone. But the look in Shuu’s eyes stopped whatever else comment she had to make, the snarky words shrivelling up and dying away in her throat, forming a painful lump instead.

“Shuu…? Is there something you’re not telling me?”

Ah, that deer-caught-in-the-headlights look. Natsuki stifled a grin as she realized that she had never seen Shuu portray any emotion besides level-headed calmness, so his surprised face was certainly refreshing. But as Shuu parted his lips to speak, she squared her shoulders and braced for whatever he had to say.

“Natsuki, I—“

A loud crash interrupted them, followed by a pained yelp and frantic words of concern interspersed with explosive expletives. Both Shuu and Natsuki looked at each other, eyes wide, before practically launching out of the booth and rushing towards the library’s reception desk.

“Yuuto? Yuuto!”

The boy in question was on the floor, hunched over double and grabbing fistfuls of his hair, whilst the librarian was kneeling beside him, eyes wide with disgust and fear.

“Yuuto! What happened to him?!”

Natsuki cried out, immediately crouching in front of Yuuto and yanking his hands away from his head, which only elicited another pained noise from the boy writhing in agony.

“Miss Librarian! Can you tell us what happened?”

Struggling to keep his voice level, Shuu grabbed the shock-still librarian by the shoulders and barely resisted the urge to shake her when she didn’t immediately reply. Her dark eyes gazed blankly at his face as if not even noticing he was there, before drifting down towards Yuuto. Somehow, the already-pale woman turned even paler.

“He wasn’t supposed to wish for anything else. He deviated. I… I didn’t expect him to deviate.”

“What?!”

Furrowing his eyebrows at the librarian’s cryptic words, Shuu tried to prompt an explanation out of her, only to get the same phrases repeated over and over, like a mantra that was the only thing keeping her from madness.

“He deviated. I didn’t think he could deviate? Of all the presenters, Hashidate Yuuto wasn’t supposed to wish for anything else. He deviated…”

“Shuu, look!”

Tearing his glare away from the librarian who was in a trance-like state, the taller boy glanced down to where Natsuki had pointed. His eyes met the sight of a strange, mechanical-looking device, with a big red button on one side.

“What is that?”

“I don’t know, but it looks dangerous. We shouldn’t touch it… where did it come from, Natsuki?”

“It fell out of Yuuto’s pocket. I was trying to shake him out of it, but he just— I mean, look at him!”

Gesturing wildly at Yuuto’s face, Natsuki turned Shuu’s attention towards it, and what he saw made his blood run cold. Yuuto’s lips were twisted into a too-wide smile, a smile that screamed ‘ _practiced and fake_ ’ to anyone that saw it, and his eyes were blank and flat, devoid of all warmth and colour. Most disturbingly was that, as lifeless as they were, his eyes were solely focused on something, unable to tear themselves away.

Natsuki and Shuu followed that line of sight, until they too were staring at what Yuuto was fixated on. The pink-haired librarian, her previous pursed lips now curled into a wicked sneer that mirrored Yuuto’s ‘smile’. One hand held up a playing card with the Joker’s laughing face printed onto its glossy surface, the other outstretched and holding onto what could only be described as a scythe.

Not just any ordinary scythe, either. No, this one seemed to be formed out of blood, rusty red and throbbing at regular intervals like a heartbeat.

“I can’t let him deviate from the script. I won’t! Not when I’m so close. So close!”

The librarian laughed, a low, toneless sound that echoed with neither mirth nor malice. She clenched the hand holding the playing card into a fist, the Joker’s face warping into an indescribable spatter of black and white before transforming into a black cube that still somehow managed to emit white light.

“Shuu… Natsuki…”

Paralysed with fear and confusion as they were, Shuu and Natsuki both turned towards that faint, barely-there whisper, and they saw that Yuuto had the strange device in his hands, thumb poised above the red button.

“I’m sorry.”

It all happened too fast. The scythe swung down like a death sentence, just as the sensation of time itself tearing apart engulfed them all.

* * *

“Natsuki.”

“Yes?”

“I… like you.”

“I know.”

“Then… will you be my girlfriend?”

The mindless buzzing of the late summer cicadas seemed louder than usual, that day.

* * *

“So, Shuu! What was it that you wanted to tell me?”

“… I’ve entered a relationship with Natsuki.”

“That’s good! I’m happy for you.”

“You don’t mind?”

“Uh… should I? All three of us are friends, right?”

The voiceless static grew louder and louder, until he couldn’t even hear his own reply.

* * *

Natsuki clapped her hands over her mouth, face growing pale. Shuu went shock-still, his eyes frozen in an expression of incredulity and denial.

“This… this can’t be happening.”

But it was. Something already felt off when they didn’t see Yuuto sitting at his usual spot in the library during free period, but this simply hammered the final nail in the coffin. The flickering lights of the television screen reflected dully off their shocked faces, and the steady droning of the newscaster did nothing to help, her lips drawn into a thin, bored line as she recited the words (like it meant nothing).

“Damn it! Damn it all!”

Slamming a fist on the table, Shuu abruptly rose from his chair and stormed out of the school cafeteria, Natsuki hot on his heels.

“Shuu! Shuu, where are you going?!”

“I don’t know! I don’t care! Anywhere but here!”

“Please, calm down! Shuu!”

Somehow, they found themselves in the library once more, sitting in the booth the three of them usually studied together in. Natsuki watched, helpless to do anything, as Shuu wrapped his arms around his shoulders and started shaking like a leaf in the wind.

“Shuu… it’s not your fault…”

“But what if it is…?”

Unable to take the guilt and utter self-loathing in Shuu’s voice, Natsuki looked away, turning her gaze towards the reception desk instead.

“What if he… he… Yuuto… because of me…! Because, because of what I said to him…!”

She clenched her hands into fists. The pink-haired librarian came into view.

“Because of me, Yuuto, he—”

Ah, there was that surprised look again. Shuu looked up at Natsuki, both his and her confusion and hurt reflected in his eyes as he lifted a hand up to caress his stinging cheek.

Natsuki sighed, lowering the hand she slapped Shuu with, and carded trembling fingers through her hair.

“You’ve got to stop blaming yourself over everything, Shuu…”

The boy sitting beside her lowered his head, tears still threatening to escape the corners of his eyes. The librarian stopped reading the novel in her hands long enough to glance at them, a dry, quiet laugh bubbling up from her throat, rolling off her tongue and escaping into the tense air.

“What makes you think it’s your fault?”

“… I told him that we started dating.”

“And…? He can’t possibly have… done that… just because of that?”

“You don’t get it, do you?”

Lowering his voice to a barely-heard whisper, Shuu gave Natsuki a side-eyed glance.

“Sure, he likes me! I know at least that much. But he’s much closer to you than he is with me, so I don’t understand… I don’t get it, Shuu. Is there something you’re not telling me?”

Shuu laughed, a sound so lost and forlorn that it made Natsuki’s heart pang.

“Natsuki, I… you… you’re a really bad liar, you know.”

The breath in her lungs felt like syrup, sickly sugary sweet and oh-so-difficult to swallow. Just like the truth Shuu confessed to her. One that, deep down, she had already knew (and tried so hard to forget).

“You remember it too, don’t you? This isn’t the first time.”

The librarian laughed again, louder this time. Her dark eyes betrayed an emotion she thought she had long forgotten.

* * *

The train station glittered in all its angular, metallic glory, reflecting the warm light of the afternoon sun onto Hachiougi’s dull, grey streets.

Yuuto leaned against the railings, watching the people walk to and fro at the intersection in front of the station. Some were laughing. A boy looked at something in his hands, then glanced up at the (cloudless) sky. There was a couple holding hands, faces flushed red with happiness. A salaryman was rushing across the street, bumping into someone he couldn’t quite see (an invisible person?) and muttering a hasty apology.

This place, the roof of the train station, why had he come here again? Oh, right, because he was supposed to stop Taishi from unleashing his plan, or something like that. But Taishi wasn’t here, so it probably meant that he had accidentally reset to an earlier point of time. (Hopefully.)

There was a nagging thought at the back of his head, telling him that this kind of life, no, this mere existence of being, was wrong. (Horrible.) There was no point to it, so why should he even bother resetting? This kind of life… didn’t deserve another continue.

But before that strangely familiar voice could get any louder and block out the rest of his thoughts, his phone buzzed in his pocket, jolting him out of his increasingly dark state of mind.

Two new messages. One from Shuu and one from Natsuki?

“Aren’t they supposed to be in class?”

He mused aloud, checking the date and time on his phone. 12:30pm, 15th August. Summer vacation. And it was a Sunday, too. Ah, the resets were really starting to affect his sense of time, weren’t they? Shaking his head, Yuuto opened the messages and slowly ran his eyes across the words. Were they supposed to contact him around this time? He didn’t remember.

**> SHUU: hey nerd meet me at the intersection in front of the train station ASAP**

**> NATSUKI: Yuuto-kun! I’ve got something to tell you, so please come to the intersection okayyy?**

Strange. (And what a coincidence, too.) Slipping his phone back into his pocket, Yuuto leaned forward over the railing, craning his head to see— ah, there they were. Right in front of the train station. But it seemed like they didn’t see each other? He chuckled at that. They were standing so close, too.

He leaned his weight further forward, wondering if he could grab their attention from up there, when the railing emitted a loud creak.

The boy in the middle of the intersection looked up from the playing card in his hands and locked eyes with Yuuto, his face painted over with fear.

That was all the warning he had.

* * *

Yuuto tumbled forward, grunting in pain as the arm still holding onto the railing gave out a loud pop as it was suddenly forced to hold up his entire body’s weight. And with the train station at four storeys tall, he doubted he could survive that fall.

His free hand scrambled to find the reset button in his pockets, even as the hand holding him up began to loosen its grip.

People were starting to notice. They were yelling.

Ah, his head hurt. (Too much noise.)

Shuu and Natsuki looked up.

(Too much noise.)

His fingers shook.

(Shut up.)

Damn it.

(Shut up!)

_Damn it all_.

**_Damn this fragmented life_** —!

Even the clerk at the train station’s ticket booth seemed sadder than usual as well.

* * *

The more he forgot, the more they remembered.

Natsuki squeezed her eyes shut and gasped as another wave of memories suddenly flooded her distracted thoughts, making her sick to the stomach. On the other side of the small but fancy table, Shuu didn’t seem to be faring all that well either, one hand clutching at his chest while the other scrabbled uselessly at the wooden table’s surface, as if struggling to make sure it was still there, that he was still there.

“How could… his own brother…! The person he looked up to all the time?”

“And I was one of the victims, too? No wonder Yuuto-kun feels like he has to keep resetting!”

They retched and heaved, fighting to keep the bile from rising up their throats. The mostly-eaten slice of carrot cake in front of them didn’t seem appetizing anymore, even though Natsuki had easily nibbled her way through half of it earlier on.

“Shuu, I don’t know what to say… I feel so horrible…”

“All this time, he’s been suffering all this time, for our sake…”

The sounds of the bustling café around them seemed muted, compared to the thudding heartbeats pounding in their ears and the noiseless static enveloping their thoughts.

Seconds ticked by, then minutes, before the dulled world slowly regained its colour and the voices of the faceless crowd around them bled into their ears again. Natsuki let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding in and slumped over the table in defeat.

“Shuu?”

“… yes…?”

“Do you think… do you think that Taishi remembers? That anyone, maybe everyone affected by Yuuto’s resets… do you think they remember?”

“I don’t think so… somehow, I get the feeling that it’s just the two of us.”

“Why…?”

“You remember, right? The librarian… um, she’s the doctor, too… Maki-chan, she’s the god that granted Yuuto’s wish, right?”

“Yeah.”

“That day in the library, when we saw the reset button for the first time… didn’t she mention something? About how Yuuto had ‘deviated’… he made another wish?”

“Shuu…”

The boy glanced up from where his eyes were glaring at his own trembling fingers, and met Natsuki’s horrified gaze.

(In the middle of the bright blue sky, a lone raincloud appeared.)

* * *

The empty, monochrome world somehow seemed duller than usual, but it didn’t matter. In fact, it made him feel better, since the usual sights and sounds of the colourful world had become too painful for him to bear, for his tired mind to process.

Yuuto sighed, focusing on the way his chest rose and fell with every breath he took, the sensation of floating carelessly in the air bringing him both euphoria and the feeling of utter dread. He tried his best to ignore the pink-haired girl who called herself a god, standing upright and rigid in front of him.

But his need to see something other than the back of his eyelids won out in the end, and with a resigned sigh, Yuuto blinked open his eyes and straightened himself up a little, in order to be able to meet Maki-chan’s gaze.

Well, glare was a better word to describe it. An absolutely livid, hateful glare that, he presumed, was supposed to send chills down his spine. But it didn’t. And somehow, that fact seemed to anger her even more.

“Hashidate Yuuto.”

She spat out his name like it was the foulest of poisons.

”I did not give you permission to exchange your wish for another. I have not yet received the compensation for your first wish, either. Explain yourself, _presenter_.”

“How can I explain myself when I don’t remember what’s happening most of the time?”

She seethed at his carelessly flung words, fingers flexing with the desire to just grab the boy’s miracle cube and shatter it into pieces. (One less dream to deal with in this imperfect world, anyway.)

“Besides, I think you’re better off asking the clerk at the train station. She seems to know more than I do.”

“Clerk…?”

“I don’t know… seems too young to be working there, too. Almost like a high-schooler.”

Abruptly, the god was mere inches in front of him, having grabbed his collar and hoisted him up so that their chests were pressed flush against each other. Her dark eyes bored into his blank ones, as if searching for an answer.

“Tell me more about this… person.”

“She’s got really long hair, with two hairclips… and even though she never seems to smile, somehow I feel at ease around her?”

Maki-chan’s tight grip on Yuuto’s collar loosened, and he took the opportunity to slip away and reorient himself as much as he could, in the world without sights and sounds.

(Even the buzzing in his ears seemed abnormally quieter than usual.)

“I can’t believe it… the Anchor of Reality has already made her move?!”

The pink-haired god shrieked, though in that world it came out more of a horrifying, otherworldly buzz of unholy noises and voices brought together against their will. Yuuto clapped his hands over his ears, though the sound easily pierced through that flimsy barrier and slithered its way into his skull anyway.

“Without me even noticing it… Yui-chan… without even waiting for me…?”

And abruptly as it came, that deafening din of sounds immediately dissipated, replaced by an utterly weak and disgustingly frail monotone Yuuto couldn’t believe was coming out of Maki-chan’s mouth.

“Hashidate Yuuto.”

Yuuto glanced upwards as she called out his name, tilting his head aside but otherwise remaining where he was.

“I… you… this timeline, too much has changed. Too much has been tampered with, I can’t— I don’t hold any control over what happens next.”

“Maki-chan…?”

A laugh resounded through the empty air, cold and lifeless.

The Clockwork God, Tamagawa Maki held out an upturned palm, whereupon a cube that glowed with all the colours of the rainbow gently floated. She held it out to Yuuto. An offering. (Of peace…?)

“I can’t give back what was taken away from you, nor can I take whatever’s left. I’m sorry… but your memory, your existence of being, is forever going to remain like this. Trapped between times, locked out of loops… simply put, Yuuto, your fate is to die, and to reset before that death, only to suffer it again and again.”

“… I know. I’ve already accepted that long ago, Maki-chan. I think… I’m happier this way.”

A choked sound. A gloved hand went to her lips.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

The dull world seemed so bright. (The noiseless static seemed so far away.)

“At least answer me this, Yuuto, before I let you go.”

His ears throbbed with the dull sound of his heartbeat.

“… Will you wish again? Will you dream once more? Are you happy with this ‘game over’? Or do you still want to continue?”

Her eyes, dark eyes, so dark. The world was spinning. Or was he falling? (Falling apart?) Asleep, maybe?

Yuuto parted his lips to reply.

“             “

Maki-chan laughed.

* * *

A normal day. Free period, and they were studying together in the usual booth at the library again.

The usual librarian was absent.

Natsuki and Shuu were quietly discussing something. They seemed… resigned…? (Defeated, even.)

Yuuto let them be, deciding instead to wander over to the nearest bookshelf, pluck out a random book, and start reading. Some sort of story, set six trillion years into the future. The words flowed into his brain like a gentle rain shower of information, washing out all the filth and muck of yesterday’s memories. It felt good.

Out with the old and in with the new, as they say.

“Hey, Yuuto.”

He turned around to see Natsuki and Shuu both smiling at him, though even with his dulled senses he could see that their strained smiles practically screamed ‘ _practiced and fake_ ’. He replaced the book back onto the bookshelf and made his way back to the booth, seating himself on the opposite bench.

His two best friends shared a look. Natsuki snaked her hand across the table’s surface and laced her fingers with Yuuto’s own, while Shuu reached a hand across and affectionately ruffled Yuuto’s hair.

“H- hey, cut that out!”

Yuuto laughed, swatting away Shuu’s hand and pulling away from Natsuki’s hand, completely missing the pained look both of them harboured for a split second.

“Yuuto…”

Natsuki choked out. Yuuto turned away. He recognized that tone.

“Yuuto, you know that we both love you, right?”

Shuu spoke slowly, willing his voice to keep steady and not waver.

“I know.”

“We love you so, so much.”

“I know.”

The buzzing in his ears had almost completely faded away.

“So, please… you don’t have to keep resetting for our sake.”

The bright and colourful world, full of sights and sounds, suddenly seemed so dull and grey.

“… I can’t. I’m sorry.”

Because he made another wish, didn’t he? He made a second wish, and the leading actor of this great, disastrous chaos had granted it for him. (The chosen presenter, the Anchor of Reality.)

“Because I want you two to be happy. And for that to happen, this is the answer.”

The clerk at the train station’s ticket booth had given him that second chance. (Anchor Yui gave him this one last thing, when everything else had been taken away from him.)

Natsuki broke down into tears. Shuu clenched his hands hard enough for the knuckles to turn white.

“It has to be, right?”

“Yuuto…”

“… After this, let’s go to the train station. I want to see the train again.”

Nodding their heads, Natsuki and Shuu managed a smile, even as it pained them to see their best friend like this, so utterly defeated. (So utterly broken.)

(Because all good things must come to an end.)

Even so, for as long as that end has to repeat and long after, Natsuki and Shuu love Hashidate Yuuto.

Have loved, and will love him for as long as he needs.

“Yuuto, I…”

“Yuuto-kun…”

“I know, I know. I love you both, too.”

(And he finally said so at last.)


End file.
